Dispatch special report | Obama, Romney campaigns: Pieces to victory

Sunday

Oct 14, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 14, 2012 at 10:26 AM

Just 23 days until Election Day and the quadrennial question persists: Which Ohio will show up this time? As fickle as it is pivotal, the state again is the gateway to the presidency, poised to tip the outcome with its 18 electoral votes. The candidates acknowledge as much.

Just 23 days until Election Day and the quadrennial question persists: Which Ohio will show up this time?

As fickle as it is pivotal, the state again is the gateway to the presidency, poised to tip the outcome with its 18 electoral votes. The candidates acknowledge as much.

"Ohio could well be the place that elects the next president of the United States," Republican Mitt Romney said during one campaign stop in the state last week.

"If we win Ohio, we win this election," President Barack Obama told a union crowd in Columbus last month.

In the past six elections, Ohio has supported three Republicans and three Democrats. It has the nation's best record of backing victors since 1900; the last time it failed to pick the winner was in 1960.

What about this time? Will we take on a blue, Democratic tinge as polls showed after Romney's "47 percent" commentary went viral? Or will we serve as the cutting edge of a Romney resurgence after the challenger bested the president in the first of three debates?

At this juncture, said Russell W. Mills, a Bowling Green State University political scientist, it's anybody's guess. "Because it's such a close race, any last-minute development is going to get a lot of attention. To try and predict an outcome today is difficult."

John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, agrees. "I think the race is very, very close. And that's not unusual for Ohio."

Certainly, Romney's campaign advisers believe the post-debate bounce can be exploited in Ohio, because they're coddling us now like they did Iowa and New Hampshire in January. The former Massachusetts governor and his running mate Paul Ryan held rallies in Ohio on five of the past six days - far more attention than given to any other state. Ryan is scheduled to be in Cincinnati on Monday.

At the same time, Obama was at Ohio State University last week and will be in Athens on Wednesday, while first lady Michelle Obama will be in Delaware and Cleveland on Monday.

The more Romney and Obama crisscross the state - Romney has spent 23 days here and Obama 15 so far this year - the more they recognize that Ohio is far from homogeneous. It is, in fact, six distinct political regions, which closely align with the state's media markets. And each region requires a tailored approach.

This week, The Dispatch is profiling the six regions, explaining why a message that sells in Cleveland might not resonate in Cincinnati; why Obama can't talk enough about the auto bailout in northern Ohio; and why Romney is wise to stress energy, especially coal, across Appalachian Ohio.

"The differences in the regions revolve around the differences in how the local economies work, so what we like to do is talk about the aspects of the Romney plan that deal specifically with those areas," said Scott Jennings, Romney's Ohio campaign manager.

"Ohio is a political battleground because a single state strategy doesn't really work here," said Aaron Pickrell, a senior Ohio adviser to the Obama campaign. "Issues that are important to people in Painesville, for example, are not always the same as what matters to people in Middletown and cities in between. And we know that.

"It's why the Obama campaign runs a localized campaign here - making sure that neighbors talk to neighbors about what's most important in their communities."

Obama won the state in 2008 by 4.6 percentage points, performing better than the previous five Democratic nominees in all of the regions. If you average their vote tallies, Obama did better by: 13 percentage points in the Columbus region; 11 points in Toledo; nearly 9 in Cincinnati; and 6.5 points in Cleveland.

But polling in the state already has been up and down for each candidate, indicating an uneven political landscape until Nov. 6.

Part of Ohio's unpredictability this year stems from disturbances in recent historic trends:

• Unemployment/economy: For the first time in many voters' memories, Ohio actually is doing better than most other states - although all acknowledge that many are still hurting. The state's unemployment rate has hovered around a point better than the national number. And "fracking" is transforming several eastern Ohio counties, with the promise of more oil and gas drilling to come.

Central Ohio, labeled by many as the key battleground within the battleground, is downright prospering compared with much of the country. The area's startling success was featured in Time magazine this month.

"One could make the case that the president could have a little bit of an advantage in Ohio," Green said. "The economy is doing a little bit better in Ohio than nationally."

While some credit the improvement to Gov. John Kasich, Green said, "I do think that has helped the president. It's made it a little easy to campaign in Ohio and gives him a little more to work with than in other states."

• Auto bailout: In large swaths of the state north of I-70 - especially in the Toledo, Cleveland and Youngstown media markets - Obama is regarded as the savior of one of Ohio's most-important industries for the $87 billion in federal loans to GM and Chrysler. While the Toledo-to-Youngstown axis is predominantly Democratic, Obama needs to roll up big numbers this year to offset GOP strength downstate.

• Senate Bill 5 carryover: Few believed the crushing defeat last year of the Republican push to strip collective-bargaining rights from public employees would seriously affect the presidential election. But it appears the 2011 battle is moving the needle a bit this year, which could prove crucial in a tight race.

• Gay marriage: Obama's support makes no difference to a narrow majority of Ohio voters, polling shows. But of the 40-some percent for whom it does, Romney has a 5-point edge - again, a potential slight movement of the needle that might make a difference overall.

• U.S. Sen. Rob Portman: He's the great debate coach instead of the running mate for Romney, but his Ohio impact still could be felt directly in his native southwestern Ohio, including Hamilton County, where Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. A huge GOP advantage in the reliably red region was critical to winning the White House for George W. Bush in 2004, and the Romney camp is hoping Portman can help them light a similar fire this year.

• Coal: Romney says Obama is waging a "war on coal," although cultural resistance to the president in southeastern Ohio might be a large factor in anti-Obama sentiment, too. Voters there traditionally don't like most incumbents, and Obama polls especially poorly in this region, which is why Vice President Joe Biden is the tip of the spear for Democratic efforts there.

While much of the difficulty of predicting Ohio's vote is due to those historically new developments, others stem from the factors that have made the state America's No. 1 bellwether since 1900: a diversity matching that of the entire nation.

"I think that, historically, and down to today, that is what makes Ohio so competitive," Green said. "On almost every measure, Ohio is a good microcosm of the country as a whole."

And one more thing likely to keep the candidates coming: "Competitive states are volatile."

drowland@dispatch.com

jhallett@dispatch.com

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